Stuff is still going on

Yeah the season is over, the snow is gone, the rains have come, well the rains SHOULD have come but haven't. That doesn't mean the sleds get neglected, or it SHOULDN'T mean the sleds get neglected...

Saturday I got some time to start putting the machines into storage, step one was to pull the windshield off the '91 Jag, the windshield comes off that sled easily so I pull it, otherwise the tarp will pull on it all summer and fold it in effectively ruining it. Then I added a couple ounces of Seafoam gas additive to the tank. I've been adding Seafoam at every fill up so this dose wasn't all that important, I also managed to run the tank down pretty far the last time I rode the sled so I didn't use very much.

Then I scrubbed the sled:

I used normal carwash soap and my normal car scrubbing sponge. This is a chance to give the sled a good check over, look for anything broken or needing attention. I found some cracks in the fiberglass of the hood but nothing too bad. The I fired it up and ran it around the yard to its summertime spot. I was very pleased in that it started right up no problem. That got the engine warm and helped dry out the hook and engine compartment. Then I waxed the hood and put two yogurt cups with mothballs in the footwells to keep the mice away.

There are a couple more steps, I need to stop and get a tarp for it, the canvas cover I have will get killed by staying outside all summer. Then I'll start it one more time and turn off the gas so the carb bowls empty out some. I'll shut it off before they run out, 2 stroke engines really don't like running out of gas. The bowls will still have some gas in them, theres nothing I can do about that but having them half empty will help to keep varnish from building up on the jets and causing trouble.

Finally I'll hose down the whole engine compartment with WD40. This gets rid of any remaining water and puts a water resistant coating on the metal parts. I did this last year on this sled and I was very pleased with the results. Its especially important since I don't have covered storage for the sleds although even if I did I think I'd still go ahead with it. I wish I'd been doing this on the Pantera, if I had I wouldn't need to repaint the tinwork...

Its not a dead sled but...

Picked up a new-to-me sled yesterday,

Its a 1998 Jag 440 with just over 3100 miles.

Its in good shape although the hood is broken a little at the hinge:

The guy claims the wind caught the hood while it was open but he's repaired it with some tin on the inside and fiberglass on the outside. It looks like a decent repair although I'll keep my eyes open for a replacement hood. It'll also need a track in a year or two, I priced the sled with that in mind...

I bought this sled because my '91 Jag beat the snot out of me last winter. When the trails were nice and flat it was a nice sled to ride but when they were bumpy it wasn't. This '98 has at least twice as much suspension, this is the last generation of the Jag, they stopped making them in '99, its got the FastRack long travel rear suspension and should be a much more comfortable ride. Its got aftermarket plastic skis with good carbides so it turns great. Starts real easy, and with a single carb its easy on the thumb and should be pretty easy on gas.

Overall I'm excited, this sled should have all the good my '91 has plus be more comfortable to ride a win overall.

Call it

What a winter its been but as I write this the snow here in north central Massachusetts is about gone. They tell me theres still riding up north but sadly I have no time for that and honestly with such an epic winter I'm about all done. I did something like 300 miles this year which is a record for me. To get to that mileage we had at least two 50 mile rides which are also records never mind having just an epic amount of snowfall.

My last ride was actually several weeks ago, I went out by myself for another 50 miler. Angie was willing to go with me but the snow conditions were less than idea for a liquid cooled machine and I was worried the Ski-Doo would overheat. The Jag just ate up the miles no problem and most of the places I rode we nice and flat so its less than fantastic suspension wasn't a big issue. After a whole season of riding past it I finally found a spot lots of people had taken pics of and Ben had told me about:

Looks to me like some sort of railroad or maybe a trolley had run through here. This runs down through the Birch Hill recreation area by the parking lot and I think the tracks must have continued down into Lake Dennison park. I didn't realize it before but I can see them as tracks now.

The Jag seems to get about 10-12mpg limiting me to around a 50 mile run which is fine as thats about as far as I can stand. The sled has good front suspension but the rear end only has a few inches of travel. I've started looking around for something newer with more suspension. Randy tried to warn me about that last year but I didn't listen. My plan is to sell the Ski-Doo and Jag and get a pair of newer machines like a Z440 or newer Jag DLX, or maybe a Polaris with an Xtra 10 or Xtra 12 suspension. Something I can ride on the whoops without getting beaten to death.

Stupid trailer

Seems like I've had to fix my trailer just about every time I've used it this season, clearly its due for a major rebuild in the off-season.

You might remember last time the passenger side taillight fell off. This time it was the license plate which was fortunately held to the trailer by the wiring for it's light.
Heres an in-progress pic of the repair:

I actually had to do a fair amount of work for this one, the bracket that held the license plate was just gone, a piece about twice the size of a quarter was left along with one of the bolts that held the plate. I ended up having to cut that bolt (and the palm of my hand while I was at it) to get the plate back off.
The repair was fairly simple, I welded a piece of corrugated pickup bed repair steel to a piece of 1/8" flat stock, then drilled holes for the plate mount and welded the flat stock to whats left of the trailer. The welds are NASTY, there wasn't much to weld to but if you can't make 'em look good make 'em big so they won't fail.

In the end I actually made the corrugated part too big because I didn't pay attention to how the plate light I'd bought mounts:

I'd added the tab on the right to hold the light which actually mounts perfectly above the plate. Oh well, I'll fix it when I fix everything else. Using a big plate like this will keep the license plate from getting bent as much.

To weld in the plate I needed to remove the tail light and of course the stud spun, so I ended up cutting the nut that held it on so that had to be replaced as did the plate light.

Monday night I went to the snowmobile club meeting and on a challenge I decided to ride in. About halfway to the parking area I hit a big bump and the running lights went out on the trailer. The brake and turn signals still worked though. Since I didn't have far to go I just kept going.

Today I finally took time to figure out what was happening. The first step was to prove it wasn't my truck which was easy, put the meter on the plug at the truck and it was fine. So then I went to the trailer and removed all the bulbs with the meter connected and set for resistance. In a normal world the meter would read some level of resistance while the bulbs were installed and open circuit (1 on my meter) when all the bulbs were removed.

In the pic above the bulbs have been removed and the meter is still showing a connection. Since I had recently worked on the trailer I automatically assumed my work to be faulty. I pulled the new tail light and let it dangle from its wires, when dangling its not grounded so it couldn't be the short. When that didn't help I was starting to get worried about one of the wires where they come down from the hitch. I got under there and started looking around and thats when I noticed the running lights under the tail of the trailer. When I got under the tail I found the wire running to them had been pinched in a piece of angle iron that had been used to strengthen the failing rear crossmember. When they'd welded in the angle iron they captured the wire between sections of weld, what a dumb move.

Those running lights had never really worked anyway so I just cut the wire. They're in a crappy place, under the tail of the trailer so they get whacked on the ground when the trailer is tilted. When I rebuild the trailer I'll flush mount them to the rear of the trailer and weld a frame around them to keep them from getting hit. Thats how my last trailer worked and it was a pretty good system. I'll use LED lights which are thinner and less likely to get hit anyway.

Weld weld weld

I was going to ride Sunday as we'd had some more snow but I came out to find this:

whoops. It turns out my old trailer is pretty rotten underneath. The frame the springs attach to is solid but the pieces that span between that and the side rails are all bad.

You can see in this pic that the previous owner had done some repairs with pieces of angle iron in the past.

I'm debating if I replace this trailer or buy some steel and rebuild it. I'm pretty much 50/50. Ben has an enclosed trailer he's talking about selling. I'd been talking about an enclosed trailer anyway, it would keep my nicer sleds from degrading over the summer like they tend to do when left under tarps so that would be a good option. On the other hand if the only thing this trailer needs is three or four pieces of steel I'd be a fool not to replace them. At the very least it would make the trailer valuable enough to sell or take to camp where we could use it as a utility trailer. For now I won't be taking it very far from home.

Anyway I welded a strip of steel from the angle iron to the side rail and then welded the light mount to that. Its not terrific but it'll get me through the rest of this season.

With that done I spent some time welding up the pipe for the Ski-Doo. When I was riding Saturday it popped and got louder. I found a bunch of pinholes in the main pipe, mostly around places I'd welded before. That pipe is looking like the Frankenstein monster. I cleaned up those welds and added some filler. I also fixed a spring hook that had broken. I need to finish out by pulling the last part of the can and rebuilding its flange to the next piece up stream. I managed to do a similar repair on another piece that came out nice. If nothing else this kind of work helps me become a better welder.

A little light Jag repair

The Jag has been a great sled but theres a couple things bugging me about it. One was a spot on the windshield I managed to crack with just a tiny tap on a tree. Today I took the time to put some packing tape on the crack.

This was more challenging than I would have expected because the Windex I was trying to use to clean the windshield before I taped it kept freezing... Got it there eventually and now I'm thinking that it looks good enough I might leave it that way. I'd been thinking I'd buy a new windshield but they're kinda expensive and will just get broken eventually... Maybe when I take this one off in the spring I'll re-enforce a little where I couldn't get to with it mounted but I think its staying.

I've also noticed the sled getting a little louder. Theres a gasket where the manifold meets the muffler and surprisingly Troy Arctic Cat actually had one so I replaced it:

New gasket installed

The old one didn't look too bad and I didn't notice much difference in my test runs but it seemed like it didn't get loud until I'd been riding for awhile. I wonder if the old gasket was letting exhaust by when it got hot...

Finally the kill switch doesn't work. Arctic Cat used a kind of pain in the ass system to shut the sled down if the carbs get stuck open. When I bought the sled it was bypassed with a nice jumper but I've had a couple cases this year where the carbs have been a little sticky and I'd like to have the kill switch back so I spent some time looking at it.

The system is interesting there are switches in the carbs and two switches at the throttle lever. One of the throttle lever switches is activated when the lever is all the way back, when you move the lever that switch opens and the other closes. The sled won't run if one of the switches isn't closed all the time. The idea being if a carb was stuck open the cable would be slack and neither switch would be active thereby shutting the sled off.

I spent a bunch of time playing with adjusting carbs because I thought I was getting caught in the transition period between one switch opening and the other closing. It turns out the first switch is never closing:

If you look directly below where the cable mounts to the throttle lever theres a hole. That hole is directly against the first switch (visible to the right of the ferrule the cable goes into) so nothing ever pushes against that switch. I've asked about it over at vintagesleds.com but I think what I'm going to do is find a set screw that fits into that hole and wind it in so that it just pushes on that bottom switch. While I'm at it I should see if I can fix the thumb warmer, that'd be nice to have...

And sometimes this happens...

We got another 10.5" of the blessed white stuff last night which managed to wipe out all the tracks in the yard. That of course needed to be fixed so I fired up the '91 Jag for a good rip. 10.5" is good deep powder but the Jag just eats it up, no problem at all so full of confidence I hit the trails for one of my pirate runs.

Nobody had been through since I went last week and even then I'd only made one pass out and back which doesn't make much of a trail. About 200 yards in I found a 5 FOOT deep drift, fortunately it descended to only 3 feet at the left side of the trail, unfortunately that was right next to a tree. I split the difference and blasted through a 4 foot wall of snow, had no choice really, there was nowhere to turn around and I didn't dare stop for fear I wouldn't be able to get going again.

With that behind it was a hard but slow run to where I leave the railbed and cross to a parallel trail. I was nervous about this because its a tight area and wasn't sure if I could keep headway but the Jag just kept slogging along. Finally got to where I could turn around, decided I'd do a clockwise turn but suddenly realized there was a deep spot right where I was headed, reversed course and ended up foolishly getting off the power and hitting that deep spot heading the other way...

I commenced to digging. This was a learning experience, with older sleds that have no rear suspension travel you heave the back end over to the side, fill in the hole under the track, heave the sled back on top to pack the snow, then back off and repeat. With a sled like my Jag that has some rear suspension you dig out under the footboards the length of the sled, then sit way back on the seat and apply power, the track hopefully finds traction and you're out. I had to try the old method once before I realized the new method would work better.

Here's a look at how close I was to completing the turn:

I think my mistake is that I thought I was going to stay in the seat through the turn, I should have been standing on the left footboard. I also realize now that I should always plan on a counter clockwise reversing turn when I can manage it because it'll be easier to stay on the throttle through the turn. In a right turn it gets hard to pull the throttle since the right grip is now down by my right knee.

Ahh live and learn right? The good news here is that since the Jag is such a good powder sled I feel much more confident about trying to make it to our camp in Maine in the winter. The camp is 3/4 of a mile from the road with no trails kept in the winter so we'd have to break trail through what would probably be powder similar to this.

I took the Jag yesterday into the state park and rode the groomed trails, it rides good but fishtails something awful. I'd decided that it needed a new track but considering its powder performance it might just need studs. Actually if I could get a deeper lug track AND studs and slightly wider plastic skis this would be an amazing powder machine...